Web Site Redesign Case Study

I'm currently working on a website redesign project for a palm tree grower in Queensland Australia. The main problem is the site just isn't getting any search engine traffic and has not been effective in generating business for the owner.

These are the issues I've identified:

SEO

Try this; go to Google and type site:www.simpalms.com.au/ into the search box. The results you see are the pages which Google have indexed and the information it has on those pages. What do you see?

Google have partially indexed the home page but gone no further. There is no description showing, only the url. Click on the link that says "Google's cache". What do you see here? Nothing! The cached page is blank.

Google knows the url of this page and that's pretty much it. This is all due to the way the site is constructed, and this is why the site is getting poor search engine results. Basically, Google knows nothing about the site other than it exists.

Keyword Research

First priority is to establish the keyword phrases we are going to target e.g. "palm tree sales queensland". Next we will build a list of keywords and put them in the page titles, headings, links and throughout the visible text. If you have a look at the keywords meta tag for this site you'll see the previous designer has listed a number of keywords hoping that this will be sufficient for the search engines to rank the site well on those keywords. That stopped working years ago. It's not enough to just put keywords in the keyword meta tag. You must use your keywords in the visible text throughout the site as well as in the links which point to your site.

Get rid of the splash page

Splash pages serve no purpose other than to add an extra step for the visitor to find the information they want. Why do that? If you have a look at this page you'll see it's basically one big image file. Search engines can't look at a picture and understand what a page is about. They can only read text, and there is no text on this page at all. The home page is vitally important both for search engines and visitors.

Another problem is if you view the page in Internet Explorer there is a "click here to enter" link. But, if you view it in FireFox the link is invisible. The visitor has to guess there is a link on the image. Also if you view the page full screen on a high res monitor the image is repeated which just looks messy.

Add content to the interior pages

Again, they are mainly just images. For example, on the Canary island page add information about the trees - the sort of things potential buyers will be interested in e.g. growing conditions, maintenance etc. This is good for visitors and search engines.

Set up a proper hosting account

The site appears to be hosted on BigPond (probably through free space provided with an Internet access account) and the domain name is forwarding to it. This is why the URL doesn't change when you click through the site. Yet another reason why the site isn't ranking well.

Hosting accounts aren't expensive these days and are essential for a business website. With a hosting account there is no need for crude "hit counters" which scream "home made". With a hosting account you will have comprehensive behind-the-scenes stats as well as many other benefits. Free web space is fine for personal or hobby pages, not for business.

Link Building

Basically there are no relevant inbound or outbound links. Link development is vitally important important for search engine rankings. There are a many ways to build links and this will be a priority once the site is redesigned.

Copywriting

We need to stress benefits. Why do people want to buy a palm tree? What's the benefit to THEM? Why should they buy a palm tree from this business and not someone else? As I said, we need to add more information to the interior pages. If someone searches for "Cuban Royal Palm", what are they looking for? Information. Get their attention by providing that information.

Design

I'm retaining the basic design elements but makining it cleaner with better navigation. Meanwhile the client is working on new content. Once finished I'll post here and you can compare before & after and follow changes in SE rankings.

Keywords: web site redesign website redesign web design case study

Website Translation Software

Have you ever considered translating your website into other languages, but dismissed the idea because it was just too complicated or expensive? I know I did, but the benefits of having your website available in other languages are plenty. You open up your content, products or services to a whole new market.

I recently discovered a script written by Jonothan Ledger called Translation Gold. Jon's script will translate your site into eight languages besides English. I've tested the script and can confirm it does exactly what it says (see Blue Mountains for Kids) to see it in action - click on the flag images near the bottom of the page). Now I don't speak any of these languages so I can't vouch for the quality of the translation. No doubt a professional translater would do a much better job, but the work and expense involved would be far greater than installing Jon's script.

If you're an AdSense site publisher then listen up! By installing this script, which takes less than 10 minutes, you will multiply the content of your site many times over - that's new original content - and make your AdSense ads available to foreign language keywords. Simply put, new content and more clicks on your ads. Are you starting to see the benefits here?

Technical Issues:

Your hosting service will need to support PHP. You'll also need to be able to upload files to your server and change file permissions (most good hosting companies provide an easy way for you to do this). If you use Dreamweaver, or hand code, you won't have any difficulties. If you use other WYSIWYG web design software such as XSitePro it can be a little more tricky, but persevere and you'll get there. It's worth it. Jon provides free support for registered users.

Steve

Keywords: website translation software translate scripts adsense

Adwords Made Easy

Brad Callen, creator of SEO Elite (search engine optimisation software) has just released a new guide to Google Adwords. This is a great resourse, whether you use AdWords to drive traffic to your e-commerce site, or AdSense to generate income from your content site.

The best part? It's absolutely free!

I've added AdWords Made Easy to my Free Downloads page.

Happy downloading!

Steve

Keywords: seo search engine optimisation adwords adsense

Update on Tag and Ping

Since buying Sean Wu's Tag & Ping a few weeks ago I've now had time to evaluate Sean's techniques. Here's what I've found:

• all of the sites I've been promoting have improved in rankings
• all sites have received direct traffic from the "tag" pages
• some of the personal bookmark pages I've created have shown up for searches on specific keywords

There's no doubt that Sean's methods are effective but you do need to use caution. Sean advocates creating multiple accounts (as in hundreds) with each bookmarking service. This troubles me, and frankly I don't advise it. It amounts to abusing these services and that's something we don't want to do. The thing is, you don't have to, because in fact there are many bookmarking services out there. I actually found over 80 even though Sean only mentions 4 in the book. Some of the admins from these sites are VERY sensitive to what they see as spam. On one site I found (Feedmarker) my IP was banned after posting just a few bookmarks to a single account. Exactly what they objected to I don't know (possibly ANY commercial site), but there are many others you can happily post dozens of sites to without a problem.

My advice? Don't create more than 2 or 3 accounts per bookmarking site and don't use software to post hundreds of urls at a time. Use these services responsibly and for the purpose they were intended. Here's a few more tips for using Tag & Ping:

• create a themed page at a social bookmarking site by bookmarking your site plus other, non-competing, resource sites (e.g govt). Add about 8 sites, with yours at the top, which targets a specific keywords phrase. Because you are creating this page on an existing authority site you have a good chance of it ranking well for your keywords. This not only creates a link to your site but generates direct traffic as well.
• open an account at flickr, create and upload a photo set related to your site. Name your photos using your targeted keywords and create links to your site in the photo descriptions. Just like the themed page above, a photo collection page can rank well for your targeted keywords as well as create backlinks to your site.

I still think Sean's book is too expensive, but that's countered by the fact that he provides lots of free bonuses including a membership site which you get lifetime free access to. So in the end, the value is there. Another book I recommend you check out is Tagging Secrets.

Steve

Keywords: tags social bookmarking create backlinks tag ping